Is it possible to build an app for windows that gets you the button names and coordinates that are currently on screen for the programs that are currently open? Preferably without image processing. Like does Windows have data the user can read about the current on screen gui components? Browser and non browser apps.

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Hi everyone,

I’m working on my first client project, which involves around 18,327 market research report entries in Excel. My task is to research each report using research websites and fill in multiple fields, such as market size, CAGR, forecast period, key trends, regional insights, and major companies.

I’ve completed approximately 80% of the work manually, but I’m struggling with the remaining entries because some information is difficult to find, and some AI-generated answers are inaccurate or too generic. I’ve also noticed that a few previously completed cells may contain incorrect information, so I need to verify existing data as well as fill in the blanks.

I’ve tried Gemini, Claude, and Grok, but they sometimes stop midway, take too long, or provide unreliable results. I’m not a technical person, I have no Python experience, and I’m trying to find a practical solution using free tools if possible.

I’d really appreciate advice on the following:

1. What’s the best way to automate the remaining research and fill in missing or incorrect Excel cells?

2. Are there any free AI tools or beginner-friendly automation tools that can handle this reliably?

3. How can I verify the information and prevent AI from generating incorrect data?

4. Is there a way to automate the research across these two websites and transfer the results directly into Excel?

5. How much would a freelancer reasonably charge for a project of this size? Each entry requires research across websites and completion of multiple fields. I’d like to understand a fair price for the entire project.

I’m not looking for shortcuts that compromise accuracy. I want to complete the work efficiently while keeping the data reliable.

I can share a small sample of the Excel structure to help explain the task.

Thanks in advance for any guidance!

I've been a data engineer for about 10 years (pipelines, data quality, warehouses), and for the past few months I've been building an AI side of that: RAG, evals, making sure AI assistants actually give correct answers. I still have a full-time job, and I'm trying to start a small consultancy on the side.

The idea: companies that put an AI assistant in front of their customers (fintech, insurance, health) often have no way to know when it's giving wrong answers, because the data underneath is stale or messy. I fix that layer.

What I've done so far:

• Built a site with a free diagnostic agent, plus an eval harness to test it
• Researched ~120 companies that actually have customer-facing AI
• Bought Sales Navigator and sent ~40 personalized InMails to CTOs and Heads of Engineering. Zero replies so far (some only a week ago)
• Offered a free review to a couple of companies in exchange for a case study
• Talked to a few people who already run agencies. Main feedback: my pricing was too high for someone with no case studies, and I sounded too technical

Honestly, I'm a bit frustrated. I can do the work. I just don't know how to get the first person to trust someone they've never heard of.

For those who got their first B2B clients without an existing network in the US:

1. What actually got you the first one? Referral, platform, recruiter, free work?
2. Would you lead with "AI reliability" or with plain "data quality", which seems to have way more budget behind it?
3. Is a free first project worth it, or does charging even a little work better?

Not selling anything here, just trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong. Thanks.

Disclosure: This post is part of a Dreamina brand collaboration.

Dreamina's $0.29 first-month offer for Seedance 2/2.5 brings up a workflow question for me: generate the footage there, then polish it in a separate editor, or wait for one tool to handle both? does anyone actually prefer mixing two different tools, or does the extra subscription and extra interface mostly get in the way?

Hi all, I’ve been working on automation stuff for a while and keep going back and forth on where the real bottleneck is. Figured I’d ask the people who actually deal with it instead of guessing.

What I keep running into:

• Documenting the process. Nobody wants to write the SOP, and when someone does it’s a giant 40 step PDF nobody opens again.
• Keeping it up to date. At my last job we had hundreds, maybe thousands, of SOPs in an internal wiki. Most were out of date, so nobody trusted or read them.
• Actually running them. AI tools are great at automating what they already know, but a lot of SOPs need business context that’s unique to your team, and agents just don’t have it.
• Apps with no API. A lot of work happens in desktop apps or internal portals that nothing integrates with.

Which of these hits hardest for you? Or am I missing something entirely?

Also, what’s an automation you tried to build (or really wanted to) where Zapier, Make, n8n etc. just weren’t enough? Curious what made you give up on it.

For context, here’s what we’ve been building:

• Record your screen doing a task once (or upload a recording) and it becomes an SOP your team can edit anytime, like a Google Doc
• The SOP updates itself when the app changes, so it doesn’t go stale
• The automation works in any app or browser, not just ones with an API

Not linking or pitching anything. Just want to know if we’re solving the right problems or if the pain is somewhere we’re not looking.

Not looking to replace anything. The automation layer is fine.

What keeps going wrong is picking what to automate next. UiPath ships its own task mining and discovery, so this is not a product gap. It is that somebody has to choose what to point it at, and that choice carries every assumption they already held.

Skan AI is the name that comes up for the broader version.

Anyone paired discovery from one vendor with automation from another? Did it change what got built or only the business case?

How would you monitor public pet-sale listings across multiple websites?

• What tools can alert you to new matches, including misspelled or mislabeled breeds?
• Can image matching find the same animal in cropped or edited photos?
• How can you automatically save dated copies before listings disappear?

What’s the simplest setup for someone without coding experience?

Mine pulls numbers from my weekly emails into a spreadsheet and drafts the summary. It cut about 40 minutes down to 5 and I still read it before sending.

What’s yours and did you ever automate something that wasn’t worth it?

Most automation tutorials assume one event at a time. Real triggers don’t work like that. An account that posts in bursts can fire a workflow a dozen times in a minute, and the slack node, the google sheets node and the llm call all start choking at different points. Sheets rate limits hit first, usually.

A setup that came up recently: a webhook feed from 1322 going into n8n, then a queue step, then the slack message, the sheet row and the llm summary. Before the queue, burst posts caused skipped rows and half finished runs. After it, everything still lands, just a few seconds late.

Queue plus a delay between runs fixed most of it, but it feels like a patch rather than a design.

How do you handle bursts in your flows? Do you queue everything, batch events into one run, or just let the failures retry?

Zapier has been getting pretty expensive for the number of automations I'm running, so I'm looking at alternatives.

I still want something reliable and fairly easy to manage, not just the cheapest option available.

For anyone who moved away from Zapier, what did you switch to and how has it held up as your workflows grew?

I started with tools like Zapier, Make, and n8n without much coding and realized most client workflows are really about logic, integrations, and troubleshooting.

Coding only became useful when I hit edge cases like messy API data or custom transformations.

For people doing automation work professionally, how much coding do you actually use day to day?

I run ops automation at a logistics company, about 40 Zapier flows and a pile of Python scripts on cron that move orders between our WMS, the carrier portals and a shared inbox. Leadership wants Claude handling the exceptions like address mismatches and missed pickups, and the plan is to expose our systems as MCP servers so it can read and act on them. IT wants code they can review, not another workflow tool, so Zapier's own MCP option is already out. I can write Python and the free quickstart stuff had a toy server running in an afternoon, but Ive never designed an API anyone else depends on. Shortlist right now is O'Reilly, Udacity's MCP course and Codecademy Pro to shore up the Python first. What would you start with if the server has to be something IT will sign off on?

I’ve been experimenting with AI-generated tech explainers and German-learning shorts over the last two days.

The workflow is: generate a first draft, review the visuals and pacing, then publish through a CLI.

The biggest problem so far isn’t uploading. It’s getting the editing agent to understand the video: whether an image matches the explanation, a cut feels awkward, or a scene needs more time.

Publishing is easier to automate than deciding whether something is actually worth watching.

For anyone doing this: how do you handle quality checks? Manual review, automated checks, or a mix?

Group chats for AI agents: A new approach to AI workflows?

Today, majority of these automations an workflows center around a more linear process. AI agents are specialized, and users drag them in to the specific step for the task that a specific agent will complete. While this way is working amazingly currently, there is a even better way to approach workflows!

I am with a development team currently working a product that allows users to gather different AI agents, group them, and give them as task directly for them to complete. This may still sound confusing for many, but it's really quite a simple idea to grasp. As the starting sentence says, a group chat.

Why Hybro?

Hybro builds an interoperability layer for AI agents, helping users/businesses to set up businesses set up workflows requiring cross-boundary interactions. A solution that doesn't restrict agents to their specific boundary/step.

The Big Question

I am curious on what workflow problems everyone wants to get good solutions on that our product may mediate.

Tasket++ lets you define your own clicks, keystrokes, cursor positions and system operations, then replay them exactly when you want. It’s a simple Windows tool that handles repetitive workflows for you: auto‑send messages, paste text anywhere, take silent screenshots, launch or close apps, adjust volume or run your end‑of‑day shutdown sequence.

Everything runs locally, with no telemetry, no cloud, and no complexity.

What it can do:
- Replay user‑defined cursor positions and keystrokes
- Paste predefined text anywhere
- Perform system actions: open files/programs, change volume, take silent screenshots, shut down, files/folders operations
- Schedule tasks at a specific time, at startup, or run via desktop shortcut
- Run tasks once, in loops, or indefinitely
- Discreet mode: runs quietly from the tray
- Use command line to autorun a task : Tasket++.exe "TaskName" <delayInSeconds (>0)> <NumberOfLoop (-1 for infinite)>
- Easily share tasks between different PC : export/import task files and program data, use feature to rescale cursor positions

Local, portable, free, open source. Privacy intact.

Fully fonctionnal, available now !
Microsoft Store: search for "Tasket++"
Portable (v2.5) version and sources: on the GitHub page /AmirHammouteneEI/ScheduledPasteAndKeys

For feedback, help, suggestions, or other inquiries : [contact@amirhammoutene.dev](mailto:contact@amirhammoutene.dev)

Nothing is vibe coded, I never used AI (except for the choice of UI colors suggested by Copilot).
Conception is genuine, I didn't know about similar tools when I began developing it.

I'm looking for testers or quick feedback (beyond its visual aspect), please give a try and comment here :)

I build WhatsApp automations for local businesses, basically auto-replies and lead capture into a sheet...Right now it’s one-off projects and then the client disappears until something breaks..

Thinking of packaging it with a white-label inbox under my brand so it becomes a monthly thing but I'm not sure.. Anyone made that switch? Did clients accept paying monthly or did they push back?

If you’ve tried letting an agent build a business, sell a service or handle revenue-generating work, which tedious tasks still pull you back in?

We asked this in a couple of agent communities, and a few useful points came up:

• Losing access halfway through a task can turn a small interruption into a full restart.
• Persistent browser profiles and dedicated inboxes can help, but people still encounter session expiry, verification codes and reauthorization.
• After a connection drops, the agent may not know whether an action succeeded. Retrying could mean paying twice, sending duplicate messages or creating another account.
• Saving progress after each step doesn’t fully solve that last problem. The provider might complete an action before the agent manages to record it.

That last point was particularly useful. Sometimes the human’s job is figuring out what already happened so the agent can safely continue.

For those running these workflows, what’s your biggest remaining headache? Account creation, Google Ads access, SMS verification, payments, permissions, or something else entirely?

A specific example would help: what was the agent trying to accomplish, where did it stop, and what did you have to do manually? How often does it happen, and have you found a workaround that holds up over time?

For context, we’re building payment solutions for agents and researching the surrounding infrastructure needed for agents to operate businesses with less human intervention. We’re trying to identify which repetitive blockers are worth solving beyond payments.

Where do you want a human approval step, and where are you only stepping in because the tools don’t let the agent finish?

There are three of us doing AI research recruiting in my company. I just write a script that scrapes and writes prompt libraries, so getting the contributor list of a repo is easy. I use Phantombuster for this.

What happens is I end up with a bunch of GitHub handles, and then I need to know who the person actually is and where they work right now. Some of them have a real name on the profile, and some don't. Some link a personal site, and some don't link anything at all. For some of them, I'm not able to find the actual person behind these GitHub profiles.

If I need to, it takes a lot of time manually to go through each person. I need to Google search, get a profile, then maybe the website, and then maybe there's a social link there. It takes time to do it manually.

When we have tens of thousands of people in a database, I don't know. There are tens of thousands of people in a database for whom I have no idea who works where, what their work history is like, or what their current status is like. I'm just curious how people are finding an actual person from their GitHub profile at scale, so I would appreciate any tips here.